"I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves." ~ ENDER'S GAME

"When have you ever seen someone who had no doubts who was also correct about anything?" ~ XENOCIDE

A Baptist is just like a Christian - only louder. ~ XENOCIDE

"Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent." ~ CHILDREN OF THE MIND

"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him." ~ ENDER'S GAME

"Humanity does not ask us to be happy. It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, then happiness as we can manage it." ~ ENDER'S GAME

"This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"

"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"

"Yes," she said.

"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours." ~ CHILDREN OF THE MIND

Well, I'm your man. I'm the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I'm your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad. ~ ENDER'S GAME

And it came into Hooch's mind that when both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth. ~ RED PLANET

"If human beings are all monsters, why should I sacrifice anything for them?"

"Because they are beautiful monsters..., And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty." ~ WYRMS

"Once you duct-tape a Ziploc bag to a man's chest, there's no going back." ~ TREASURE BOX

And they were gnawed within by the grief of knowing that this greatest gift of all gifts was forever out of their reach. ~ CRUEL MIRACLES -- MORTAL GODS

Sometimes it was very nice to have money and lawyers. Why ordinary people didn't strangle arrogant bureaucrats more often, Quentin didn't know. ~ TREASURE BOX

Quentin immediately quoted: "'Whenever I hear you saying, Rise and shine, rise and shine, it makes me think how lucky dead people are!'" ~ TREASURE BOX

"Good people do not let others suffer needlessly." ~ PASTWATCH

"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be." ~ ENDER'S GAME

"Good people can't out-think evil, cause evil thinks of things good folks can't think of." ~ HOMEBODY

"We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time."

"Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!"

"It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees — knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying." ~ ENDER'S SHADOW

Forget it, Mazer. I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first. ~ ENDER'S GAME

Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you. ~ TREASURE BOX

"I went back through some of the tapes. I can't help it. I like the kid. I think we're going to screw him up."

"Of course we are. It's our job. We're the wicked witch. We promise gingerbread, but we eat the little bastards alive." ~ ENDER'S GAME

"You were born in the wrong century, you could have made Thomas Aquinas tear out his hair. Nietzsche and Derrida would accuse you of obfuscation. Only the Inquisition would know what to do with you—toast you nice and brown." ~ SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON

"I thought: If I could just make a good family, if I could just learn to be to other children, their whole lives, what Andrew was, coming so late into ours, then that would mean more in the long run, it would be a finer accomplishment than anything I could ever do with my mind or my hands." ~ XENOCIDE

"You don’t have to eat the entire turd to know that it’s not a crab cake." ~ SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON

"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it." ~ ENDER'S GAME

"The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them." ~ XENOCIDE

"I'll have that someday...Someone who'll kiss me good-bye at the door. Or maybe just someone to put a blindfold over my head before they shoot me. Depending on how things work out." ~ SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON

"And no matter how well we think we know people. The fact is we're all strangers in the end."

“Free will doesn’t exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can’t trace them back. If you’ve got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the casual chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to.” ~ XENOCIDE

“Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can’t punish him, because he can’t help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can’t honor him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you. So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they’re being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It’s all a made-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody’s actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.” ~ XENOCIDE

"Isn't that the sweetest little well-balanced undergraduate-level philosophy of life." ~ CHILDREN OF THE MIND

“They never know anything. They don’t have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that’s really going on is that they’ve got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in while to express their mindless pseudo-knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts. Collectively, they’re a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by the people who still don’t understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.

So…no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals—and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with." ~ XENOCIDE

"Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet." ~ CHILDREN OF THE MIND

The great forces of history were real, after a fashion. But when you examined them closely, those great forces always came down to the dreams and hungers and judgments of individuals. The choices they made mattered. ~ ATLANTIS

Trying to shock nuns is not much sport. There is no trophy. ~ SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON

“It might not be Achilles who took the other kids.”

“It might not be gravity that holds us to Earth, but rather an unknown force with identical properties.” ~ SHADOW OF THE HEGEMON

There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. ~ ENDER'S GAME

"Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you." ~ ENDER'S GAME

“No matter how smart or strong you are, there’s always somebody smarter or stronger, and when you run into somebody who’s stronger and smarter than anybody, you think, This is a god. This is perfection. But I can promise you that there’s somebody else somewhere else who’ll make your god look like a maggot by comparison. And somebody smarter of stronger or better in some way. So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down…A real god doesn’t care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.” ~ XENOCIDE

We spend our lives guessing at what’s going on inside everybody else and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we "understand." Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then. ~ XENOCIDE

Others find humanity by looking in their own hearts. Only lost souls need to search for it outside themselves. ~ XENOCIDE

And what good is it? To see something wondrous, and have no idea what it is you saw? ~ EARTHFALL

Wouldn’t it have been sad if I had spent my life bending and shaping life, and yet had never taken part in it myself? I was spared of that and I am glad of it. ~ EARTHFALL

As long as you keep getting born, it's alright to die sometimes.

Back to Quotes Page